


The Dumbest of The Bunnies

by luemeldane



Series: The Tales Of The Bunny And The Fox [2]
Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Pre-Slash, Romance, Slow Burn, bill's POV, changing relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-28 01:57:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12595544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luemeldane/pseuds/luemeldane
Summary: But going back to their earlier conversation, there was one thing that was bugging him. Did this boy really had a girl waiting for him back home? For a second, the older man tried to imagine how a man like Holden would pick up a woman. To his credit, Bill would admit that he had a handsome face and an elegantly shaped body. Unlike Bill, who was big and bulky and altogether intimidating, Ford was tall and slender. The older man was sure there was some quite well carved muscles under all the layers of starchy clothes he wore, but they didn’t bulge out and vulgarized his appearance. So if it were due to his look alone, Bill wouldn’t have trouble believing that Holden was a player.The problem was his personality.





	The Dumbest of The Bunnies

**Author's Note:**

> Well, when I placed that "Slow Burn" tag on this series, I meant it. 
> 
> But I think it is very important to keep it slow. Both Bill and Holden's personalities are very difficult and it just doesn't seem plausible that they would be at each other's throaths and then suddenly think "Oh, wait, maybe I actually like this person". It's the little subtle changes on their behavior towards each other as they spend more and more time together that make this couple so alluring, and I want to make it justice. 
> 
> So, this follows the events of the first episode from the point where the last story ended. It's a bit more personal and includes a scene that isn't in the show. I hope you guy enjoy it. 
> 
> Also, let me know if you find any mistakes!

_ Bill gaped a little. For a man with as much experience as he had, it was quite difficult to find himself dumbstruck about something, about anything really. But he had a feeling this might change now that he had Holden Ford tailing him all over the country. The kid sure had a talent to… surprise, let’s just say.  _

 

\---X--- 

 

They had arrived in Fairfield, Iowa, no more than an hour ago. The trip had been pleasant, with some small talk done from time to time, but no deep philosophical conversations as he sort of expected Holden would want to have. As soon as they arrived, he got the chance to vent his pent-up energy by being sarcastic and rude to a bunch of reporters (which always brightened up his day) before they proceeded to organize everything they would need for the lecture of the day. Just as they finished off the preparations, the uniforms began to flow in and he engaged in some chitchat, indulging the local cops on their curiosity about the almighty FBI. It always worked like a charm over the receptiveness of their audience.

Eventually, he began his presentation, spitting out the carefully thought out lines - simple enough so their interlocutors could understand, but complex enough to guarantee their mystifying effect. He made an art of using his physical appearance and natural traits in his favor on these things, walking and sitting around in dominant postures - puffed out chest and whatnot - as if he owned the room. Also, he spoke slowly and with pointed pauses between his words. It worked both to highlight what he was saying and to put the public on a condescending position. On an unconscious level, the message that he sent was that he had some very, very important things to say and that he would slow it down so they could comprehend. Also, it brought out the full effect of his husky tone, which was always a welcomed bonus.

All the while, Holden was following his lead without hitches. He hadn’t expect the man to be so obedient and well behaved. Maybe he wouldn’t be as much of a pain in the ass as Bill had anticipated. He was feeling reassured when he gave the floor to Holden’s part of the lesson. The kid had been caught off guard (it made the older man feel a little honored, because it looked like he was  _ really  _ paying attention to his words, despite the fact that he already knew them beforehand) and coughed as an incredibly obvious way of steadying himself. He recovered quickly, though, and started with the prefabricated discourse. The first lines of it sounded very solid and Agent Tech could see the instructor inside of him showing off.

But them, someone decided to ask a question and a few others had followed. 

The first answers were sensible enough, even left some space for elaboration on some of the subjects they had to cover during the lecture. Good, smart move, Bill wanted to think. But even if his words were still safe and sound up to that point, watching Holden’s expression as he was questioned made the older agent’s stomach drop. It was like watching a trainwreck waiting to happen. The man’s face was not excessively expressive, but his eyes… Oh god, his eyes! They gave away everything. It was as easy to read him as it would be to read an open book placed right before his eyes. 

Holden Ford had met a spark. 

His usually aloof eyes lightened up and were suddenly filled with the passionate fire that Bill had seen a glimpse before. It was like someone had severed the tensed wire that kept the kid’s rigid demeanor and both his body and mouth were cut loose in the blink of an eye. He began to move around and use his limbs to reinforce his words. His eyebrows were going up and down over his forehead. Bill had to do something, he had to intervene before something very, very inappropriate fell out of Agent Ford’s mouth. 

“In an homicide situation, we do the inverse. We ask ‘what happened?’, ‘why did it happen that way?’, which narrows the search for who did it. But what if our killer is someone who’s not rational?” He started, standing up quickly and throwing a question at their audience in an attempt to retake the reins he had foolishly placed on Holden’s hand. It seemed to have worked, because the boy stayed silent for a few seconds.

“Why do we behave the way we do?” The answer came in the familiar voice and Bill’s head turned so fast towards its owner that he thought his neck might have snapped.  _ Damn, kid! _

“It’s a question asked by poets, philosophers and theologians since time immemorial. The playground of Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Freud. The stuff of  _ Crime and Punishment _ and  _ Beyond the Pleasure Principle _ .” Bill pursed his lips and shook his head in resigned frustration and incredulity. As naive and well-intentioned as Holden might’ve been, the guy was a trained FBI agent, for fuck’s sake. How could he even entertain that speaking about poets and philosophers to the policemen of a tiny Midwestern town was a good idea, would be  _ productive _ somehow? And he hadn’t finished yet - God help them. “The greatest minds in history have been fascinated by the vagaries of behavior. So, in a case where we can't immediately divine a motive, we shouldn't panic. It's a riddle, but it can be solved. It's complex, but it's human.”

“ _ Oh, sure, end the speech with some cheesy abstract line, why don’t you? _ ” Was Bill’s bitter thought before he cut in again, trying to light the mood with a joke. “Thank you Holden. That was very… illuminating.” The strain in his voice was so obvious that he mentally reprimanded himself. As much as he wanted to punch Holden’s face, maybe even shake him by his neck to see if some sense would awake inside that idiotic brain of his, he had to keep his composure. This ship was clearly sinking, but they both were trapped in it. The best he could do was some damage control and see if they could salvage anything out of the impending disaster. 

He kept going, picking up from the point where Holden had diverted from the script, and things seemed to be working out reasonably fine. He could see the boy’s disappointed and somewhat sad expression by the corner of his eyes. He felt a small pang of guilt inside of his chest. It was like taking the candy out of an overly excited toddler. Bill hadn’t felt any pleasure while doing it, but it had been necessary. 

“ _ Tough up, kid. _ ” He thought and was taken a little aback by the fond feeling that overwhelmed him as he did so. 

 

\---x--- 

 

Bill wanted to flee the premises of Fairfield’s Police Station as soon as the lecture had ended. Along the way, it became some kind of tradition to stay a little longer and talk in a more informal manner with the local cops, mostly because they wouldn’t let them leave before they could suck the FBI Agents dry and sate the far range of feelings involved in the situation (from wonderment and curiosity to anger and contempt). It usually didn’t bothered him. Quite the contrary, it was his favorite part of the whole ordeal because they could get down and exchange knowledge about some real cases and personal experiences. But he had already realized (still much too late for his liking) that Holden Ford and questions were not a safe combination, so he just wanted to skip it altogether and go back to the motel where he could wash everything down with a big dose of alcohol.

When it became clear that they wouldn’t be able to avoid that dreadful moment, he sat down in defeat. If shit was going to go down, at least he wanted to be comfortably seated through the ride. 

As expected, all the questions that ensued were about the little detour Holden had taken the liberty of taking. Bill wanted to help the kid out, but he had dug his own grave on this. So he just sighed heavily and watched the scene with sympathetic eyes, giving some small pieces of insight here and there that didn’t help the situation at all. In the end, it hadn’t been as much of a carnage as the older man thought it would. But it also wasn’t over yet. They still had a whole day ahead of them and that left a lot of time and space for things to go wrong. Bill could only hope they wouldn’t. 

 

\---x--- 

 

“They don’t wanna learn. What are we even doing here?” As they sat beside the motel pool, the younger man finally allowed himself to express his frustration and outrage. 

“Don't make it too complicated.” He warned, taking a drag out of his long awaited cigarette. 

“What's wrong with complicated?” Holden asked and Bill never thought he would see the man so affected. The once perfect hair was now a mess of threads and his skin seemed to be darkened by a shadow that came from within.

“There's complicated and there's too complicated, Holden.” Bill found himself saying. He knew it was not what the man wanted to hear, but it was the truth nevertheless. He hoped it would work, because as much as he bitched about the kid’s attitude in that grumpy-old-man way of his, it was kind of sad to see someone who had such a vivid soul in that dampened state. 

“We used to do this experiment in social psychology.” Ford began, unexpectedly changing the subject. 

“Uh-huh. What was that?” Bill encouraged. Finally, life seemed to come back to the dark eyes and he changed his position, now outright facing his senior agent.

“You get onto a crowded elevator, and you face the opposite direction, the back of the elevator, and everybody freaks out. They're uncomfortable for reasons they can't even articulate. But if you turn around and face the front, everybody relaxes.”

Holden’s voice got strangely low and distant as he spoke. Despite the fact that he had seemed excited because the older man was willing to listen to him, soon it became clear that he was actually excited because he was allowed to talk at all. He probably didn’t get many opportunities to voice his thoughts out loud and when he did, chances were that he only met resistance and disdain. Whatever he was saying was more for the sake of his own ears than Bill’s. He squinted a little and even if his eyes were turned to the older man, they seemed to be looking at something that was far beyond him, far beyond  _ them _ , and probably far beyond their here and now. To see that much puzzlement about something so vague actually poked at some tiny part of Bill’s mind that wasn’t completely disenchanted with the world yet. He felt the nagging discomfort caused by his own curiosity creeping deep inside of him. 

“Well, how do we do that?” Bill discovered that he didn’t had the heart to burst the other man’s moment and call him back to reality. 

“What do we have in common? What unites us? What keeps us all awake at night?” Bill didn’t know the answer and wasn’t sure if he wanted to. But Holden’s intense eyes made a very good argument for themselves and he couldn’t help but wonder. 

In the end, what kept Bill awake that night was some of his own metaphysical questions - those he had asked himself a long time ago and that had been pushed down by the burdens he had acquired during the course of his life. Funnily enough, when he thought about them, it was not his own voice that resonated inside of his head. Instead, it sounded suspiciously like Holden’s. It came accompanied by the image of dark burning eyes that also seemed familiar, but the light that was shining in them wasn’t bright and vivid anymore - it was something more somber and sinister, but alluring all the same. They could fuel Bill’s nightmares as easily as they could fuel a whole different kind of dream. He was glad that sleep found him before he could dwell further on that particular line of thought. 

 

\---x--- 

 

The next day’s lecture started with a controversial subject right off the bat - Charles Manson. He knew it was very risky to venture into that territory, given the note that the last one had ended, but now Bill was actually curious to see where this was going to go. He listened attentively to Holden’s explanations about the story behind the famous criminal’s life and he could feel that his head was turning from one side to the other in the same manner a curious dog would move to look past his own muzzle. Yet, he couldn’t help it. For some reason unknown even to himself, he not only felt comfortable giving the reins to the other man again, but he was also enjoying the experience of sitting back and listening to him as if he was a mere spectator. 

Holden actually had a talent for teaching. A least, he did it with visible passion and enjoyed himself while doing so, even if he didn’t have a very good grasp on how to deal with the specificities of different audiences (he teached the cops as if he was teaching in College, which was a big “no no”, but Tench would let it pass this time around).

“ Okay, but I'm saying maybe, just maybe, locking him up in his young life helped make him what he was.” It was only when those words had left the younger’s lips (surprisingly small, considering how much he talked) and were met with immediate, automatic protests that all of his previous worries came rushing back to Bill, who scratched his face helplessly, any trace of relax suddenly gone from his features. He knew that now it was not just about people not understanding the depth of something and then mocking it to cover their own ignorance, like it had been on the day before. This would stir people up for good, on intimate levels. 

“They locked him up because of what he did. They already knew what he was.” An old man, detective by the looks of him, said with much more anger on his tone than he would have if he was speaking out of common sense morality. There was something more to this guy that Bill was certain Holden wouldn’t be able to notice. As the man tried to explain himself, he knew it was time to intervene. 

“What Holden's trying to say is maybe it's both. The one impacting on the other in a vicious circle.” He said as he got up, a vain attempt to appease everyone’s mood. 

“When it comes to this kind of thing, nobody has all the answers.” Holden insisted, petulantly. 

“We have some answers.” Bill retorted and the impatience on his tone was clear. He knew that arguing with each other in front of those men would do them no good, but the impertinence the other man was showing was getting on his nerves too. 

“We should be asking questions.” Ford just didn’t know when to quit. Tench didn’t want to be forced to call upon the hierarchy principle to sort this out, it was not his style at all, but he would if he had too. 

“No shit. Well, I'll just tell my buddies in Robbery-Homicide who were there when the corpses were found, that they may have overlooked a difficult upbringing.” The old detective cut in again and there was it, the ‘thing’ about him that had nagged Bill’s intuition.

“You were LAPD?” 

“Twenty-two years.” Bill could only look at the boy with pity on his eyes. He was screwed.

“You worked Manson?” His sentiment proved to be misplaced, because instead of taken aback by the sudden turn of events, Holden was suddenly very interested. The fucker. 

“No, but I knew every single man who did. How many homicides have you worked?” 

Harshly, humiliatingly, Holden was put back on his place. Bill resigned, abandoning any further attempts to mend that mess and going back to his chair. He couldn’t do anything more for his partner, so he just sat there and watched as the The Dumbest of The Bunnies stood helpless in front of the pack of rabid dogs that he had enticed and that was now very eager to bite him to shreds.

 

\---x---

 

The ride to the bar was deadly silent. Bill was feeling a little bit sorry for Holden, but majorly, he furious with the man. 

“You need to figure out who you're talking to before you tell a sob story about little Chuckie Manson. They wrote "pigs" on the wall in their victim's' blood.” He finally said after they placed their orders. It sounded like he was scolding a child. 

“They completely missed my point.” The other lived up to the analogy, answering with the same childish petulance he had displayed before. 

“In the future, ask if anyone's worked the case before you bring it up. Know your fucking audience.” The older man almost scowled at himself as he heard his own voice unwittingly soften, going from a scolding tone to one of guidance.   

“Oh shit.” Agent Ford let out as he saw who had just entered the room. In his head, Bill echoed the sentiment. 

He tried to reassure the boy, but found that it was something very difficult to do when he also thought that nothing good could come out of this meeting. To the surprise of them both, the man hadn’t come to pick a fight. Bill would’ve bet he was going to chide Holden, call him a self righteous brat and say that he had no right to be talking about grownups’ stuff. Maybe he would even say that the boy’s words had been disrespectful to the victims themselves, to their families and even to the people who had been forced to deal with the horrors he spoke so carefreely about. Good thing he didn’t, though, because he would have lost. 

Instead of cussing the hell out of agent Ford, the man had actually spilled his heart out to them and asked for help with a case. He was so desperate that he was willing to rely on something that he didn’t understand, let alone believed in. It was impressive to see that even a man like that, worn out by the crudeness of his job, was still capable of taking leaps of faith into the unknown, that he could still find it in him to believe in the youth and what they had to offer and that he was willing to admit that maybe the old ways didn’t work anymore. Bill felt refreshed somehow, despite the horrid thing they were discussing. 

Holden had moved to his side to give the old man space to sit comfortably and talk to them. The boot was small, specially considering Bill’s size, and their bodies barely fit in it. Their shoulders kept brushing against each other from time to time until, at some point, their sides ended up pressed closely together. The senior agent had the distinct impression that it was not only the narrow space that had caused that. Actually, the younger was leaning against him, albeit unconsciously. For all of his bravado, he was still fairly inexperienced in dealing with normal people, outside of the Bureau. Seeking contact with Bill’s sturd frame was a way of seeking reassurance. It was like Bill was his rock or something, as stupidly romanticized as that might sound.

But he had to admit that sitting there, shoulder to shoulder, sharing a touch that demanded a great deal of trust to be comfortable instead of awkward, made him feel like they were  _ really  _ partners for the first time, despite their many differences. The sensation had lingered even after their physical contact was broken and they moved back to the Police Station to go over the pictures of the crime. The distance between them had definitely decreased. What had changed wasn’t exactly clear, but now they were standing a little closer, talking more to each other than to themselves and everything was just a little bit different than it had been before. 

Well, just a bit though, because soon enough Holden was showing his excessive honesty and straightforwardness again and the companionable environment that had been established between the three of them suddenly cascaded down to another fight. 

“This woman was devoted to her child, tried hard, and some stranger came along and... Come on, agent Ford, you got fancy methods. What does a broomstick in the ass of a dirt poor single mom mean?” Frank asked angrily, but it felt like a desperate beg all the same. 

“I don't know.” Holden said with a lost expression on his face at the same time Bill exhaled heavily in distress. It didn’t matter how many years he spent doing this, it never got easier.

“You're kidding me.” Detective McGraw sounded like a man who was brutally robbed of his hope, which he was. 

“I don't understand it. We can't help you with this.” Holden said, still in stupor before his own lack of resources. 

“We need more time to go over this.” Bill, on the other hand, lied his face off because it was way too heartbreaking to watch the old man’s blank, apathetic expression. 

“We are in the dark here.” Holded insisted, voice raising up a little, as if he was begging Bill to  _ see  _ this. To stop ignoring the matter. “We don't know any more than you do.” Whomever said that the truth can hurt was damn right about it. 

“How fucking dare you?” Despite the harsh words, the detective voice was void of any emotions and it sounded like defeat.

“I'm sorry we wasted your time.” Holden finally said before turning around and walking out with firm steps. 

Bill knew that the kid hadn’t done any of that on a whim. He hadn’t chosen not to lie just because he wanted to spite Frank, Bill, the local police or whomever else. He hadn’t lied because he  _ wanted  _ to face the truth and that was even worse. That was quite possibly the most dangerous thing that could’ve happened. God help them. In a last effort to ease the burden of Frank’s shoulder, he asked him for the photos and rushed after his partner, leaving behind a vague promise that maybe they would keep looking into it, maybe they would try harder, maybe they would catch this monster for Frank.

He got in the car and banged the door violently, venting an anger he hadn’t even realized that had been consuming him. He wasn’t sure if his wrath was directed at Holden for his lack of sensibility, at Frank for thinking that he had the right to make demands when he was asking for a favor, at the Bureau for not preparing them enough, at the fucked up lunatic that had killed those people, at the world in general or at himself for failing everyone else, for not being able to solve any of those problems.

He turned on the engine and left the back alley where they’d parked their rented car. At his side, the kid was silent and distant, clearly mulling over the day’s events. He tried to calm himself down, but it felt like something inside of him was bubbling and that he was about to burst. The melancholic song playing on the radio seemed all too perfect for the moment, as if it had been handpicked, and it wasn’t helping. He wouldn't have been able stop the words that came tumbling out of his mouth even if he’d wanted to.

“In the dark, huh?” Bill’s voice cut through the radio’s noise with the sharpness of a killer’s knife.

“We are.” Holden stood his ground. He wouldn’t relinquish over this. “I have studied everything we have to offer. I've taken this ride out here with you, listened to everything that you've been kind enough to teach me, but I still think that we're talking about something we don't understand in the slightest.” He spoke quickly and assertively. It was clear that he didn’t want to sound ungrateful or offend his senior, but at the same time, he wanted to make the man see that what they were doing wasn’t enough anymore - that there was a whole portion of this world that was still waiting to be discovered and comprehended. And the fact that Bill was refusing to acknowledge it was infuriating to him. 

“I was trying to help you.” Bill spat out rather hypocritically. This whole thing had started because of his own selfish needs and he hadn’t given a second thought about Holden’s feelings and aspirations about it. “If you don't like it, go back to your college kids and we'll forget about it.”

“Ada and her son were killed for reasons we are simply not equipped to understand. It wasn't lust murder. It wasn't some random thrill killer who was born bad, and it wasn't a pantie thief who wanted to change things up. It was an aberration.” Holden all but shouted with an indignant tone, as if he couldn’t understand why the hell Bill just couldn’t understand such an obvious thing.

“Let me tell you something about aberrant behavior, Holden. It's fucking aberrant. If we understood it, we'd be aberrant too. Fortunately, it's not incumbent upon us to write a dissertation.” He knew this was an oversimplification of things and he also knew that it was a sure fire way to rile the other up, so he blurted it out anyway. 

“Well, maybe we should.”

“Why?” Bill regretted asking immediately, because Holden quickly maneuvered his slender frame in the narrow space of the passenger’s seat so he could face Bill with his whole body. It was the same thing he had done by the pool on the previous day and it seemed to be an habit whenever he was explaining something that really intrigued him. 

“Our job is to give him something he could not have figured out himself.” He said, glaring squarely at the older face, unblinking. An there it was again, that fire in his eyes that unnerved Bill to the point of making his skin crawl when confronted by it. As they passed by the street lamps and their interspaces, an array of light and shadow was cast over the boy’s visage and, again, it felt like there was something somber there, switching on and off. 

“I am sticking my neck out for you.” He didn’t like the way this conversation was going, so he tried throw the other man into a little guilt trip instead.    


“No disrespect.” His diversion attempt failed miserably if the way Holden had tipped his head down and was looking at him from under his brows was any indication. He must have recognized the strategy because he was also shaking his head discreetly from side to side in a sign of rejection. He was making it clear that he would not fall for it. “At the moment, I still think we can’t say anything to a guy like McGraw with any kind of certainty.” 

“Let me ask you something. Where are you from?” He changed the subject again, but this time it was with purpose.

“I was born in New York, but it's kind of a mixed bag.” Despite the incredulous expression painted all over his face, Holden had answer anyway.

“Okay. Well, that's what you are right now, a mixed bag. A little college education, some experience on the street, some insight, a lot of horseshit.” Trying to discredit the argument by discrediting the arguer was a lewd move - the  _ argumentum ad hominem  _ and whatnot - but he was willing to play any card to shut the other up. 

“I agree with you. It's been one step forward, two steps back.” The man by his side admitted without blinking. Bill should know better by now. It was never very effective to use the truth against such an honest person. 

“Let me ask you something else. Do you have a girlfriend?” Another pointless question. This one was more out of curiosity to see if there was anyone out there who could actually put up with this guy’s shit.

“I do now, Bill, as it happens.” Holden’s voice suddenly had a defensive edge that Bill hadn’t heard before. It sounded like people doubted this possibility quite a lot. Bill himself was taken aback by the answer, even if he was the one who asked.

“Okay. So next time you're a long way from home and you flip your shit, you find a pay phone and you tell it to your girlfriend. Okay?” Now Bill was just being mean and he knew it would put an end to their argument. 

“Okay.” Holden resigned with a sour note on his voice, and moved to sit straight on his seat again.

“How's that sound?” Bill insisted, poking some more at the fresh wounds.

“It sounds okay, Bill.” The kid sulked.

In the end they had fought for so long and hadn’t gotten anywhere. During what was left of the trip, the only sounds filling the air were the car’s engine and the radio’s songs. 

 

\---x---

 

After a few minutes, maybe an hour of silence (after so many days on the road, the radio sounded like nothing more than background noise to his ears), Bill’s brain became bored. Without its owner permission, it fished around his recent memory file for something to entertain itself with. As a result, Bill found himself thinking about the girlfriend conversation. He couldn’t help but steal a sideway glance  at the man on his right. Holden had fallen asleep, head shaking softly with the bumps of the road. He looked peaceful like that and no one would believe how much of a troublemaker he actually was by his angelic slumberous look. 

Like this, Bill could see just how young the kid was and all of a sudden, he became a little self-conscious of the age gap between them. There was fifteen years separating them. It was a whole life right there. He pondered if maybe he wasn’t being too harsh on him. Bill had been young once and the experiences he had had back then were what allowed him to be who he was now. He was expecting of Holden that he acted like someone who had so many more years on the run than he did and it was unfair. He knew he wouldn’t in the end, but he considered apologizing 

But going back to their earlier conversation, there was one thing that was bugging him. Did this boy really had a girl waiting for him back home? For a second, the older man tried to imagine how a man like Holden would pick up a woman. To his credit, Bill would admit that he had a handsome face and an elegantly shaped body. Unlike Bill, who was big and bulky and altogether intimidating, Ford was tall and slender. The older man was sure there was some quite well carved muscles under all the layers of starchy clothes he wore, but they didn’t bulge out and vulgarized his appearance. So if it were due to his look alone, Bill wouldn’t have trouble believing that Holden was a player.

The problem was his personality. The kid was aloof and seemed to live in his own world sometimes.  He didn’t look like a charmer at all, much less a sly seducer. Of course there was an intensity to him that Bill could see awakening the female interest, but Holden himself hadn’t owned up to that fire of his yet. Most of the time, he only looked like he was lost in the outside world. So, it was more likely that he would be the one being seduced than the seductor himself. Holden could be very sharp about some things, but he was really oblivious to some others. He also got easily overexcited, to the point where he would end up stumbling over his own feet due to his eagerness to do the things he wanted. He was a good guy, but very unsteady. To get some balance, he needed something solid to ground himself to. 

Bill remembered vaguely the way the boy had unconsciously leaned against him on the restaurant boot earlier that night. When he had been confronted by something new, something he wasn’t used to and didn’t know exactly how to deal with, he had reached out for Bill’s safe presence. Even if he hadn’t said anything, the older man could see it in his eyes that he felt comfortable and reassured by the knowledge that Bill was there and had his back. Despite the distance between them in the car, it was almost like the grizzled man could feel the same heat radiating from the other’s body that he had felt back there in that moment. He hadn’t really thought about it because he was focused on Frank’s story, but now that he looked back, the fact that Holden had some very high body temperature was a little surprising. For unknown reasons, Bill had associated the boy’s image with coldness. Well, he had been really wrong on that one.

Even considering all this data he had gathered about his newest partner, Bill still found a little hard to believe that he could make a common relationship work out. Maybe it was someone older, who would find his youthfulness refreshing. Or maybe someone manipulative, who would find his idealistic nature very opportune. It also could be someone of a more dominant and protective nature who found his lost-but-eager puppy personality endearing. Another possibility was that it was a highly intelligent person that found Holden’s intellect challenging and didn’t care that much about the rest... Now that he thought about it, there was actually many possibilities out there.

It was a world of foxes after all, and it shouldn’t be surprising that some of them would want to get a piece of the Mr. Dumbest of The Bunnies over there. He casted one last glance at the almost child-like sleepy face of his partner. So much more tolerable now that his big mouth was shut and those fiery, dangerous eyes were closed…  Bill smiled to himself. He could feel the kid growing on him already. 

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, this must be a record. To have written this much in two days and to have posted two chapters in a roll is a first for me. It shows how much this ship gets to me... 
> 
> Well, this one was a bit more romantic and "heated" than the last one. I know it's not much, but the tendency is that it will get increasingly hotter as they relationship develops. Stay tune if you want to get to the naughty stuff, folks! They are coming (albeit rather slowly)! 
> 
> If you liked it, please leave your kudos and tell me about in the comments. If you didn't, please, do it too!


End file.
